Customer Video

Highlights

129% increase year-over-year with Marketo as hub for sales and marketing processes

3X conversion rate on MQLs

Sales and marketing fully aligned to drive results

Challenges

Acquia enables organizations to unify content, community, and commerce to deliver exceptional digital experiences. Acquia suffered the same challenges as many fast-growth technology companies. Utilizing a legacy marketing automation platform for email blasting, Acquia lacked the ability to send targeted, relevant content and engage customers. Sales and marketing weren’t aligned, so pipeline creation suffered. Acquia recognized the need for a solution to enable targeted, focused messaging to engage customers. In addition, Acquia sought a platform with ease of use, affordability and one whose customer support team would be responsive if Acquia had questions or issues. “Marketo fit all those pieces for us,” said Jamie Sloan, Senior Manager, Marketing Operations, Acquia.

Solution

With Marketo, Acquia has seen a huge shift in how marketing and sales work together. Acquia used Marketo to build a scoring model to improve win rates and increase revenue per deal. Sales now has confidence in the leads that marketing passes over, which means sales follows up quickly and thoroughly. Meetings between sales and marketing that used to be contentious now focus on how to drive better results, be more creative and move faster. Because the Acquia sales cycle is lengthy, building long-term relationships with customers is essential. With Marketo as the cornerstone, Acquia can continually educate customers about products and services through the long sales cycles.

Marketo’s ease-of-use also means it’s accessible and intuitive enough for even new users. “As the marketing operations manager, I love that I can get people using the system really quickly, which wasn’t the case with previous marketing automation platforms that I’ve used,” Sloan said. “Marketo is easy to explain so people at all levels can use it.” Acquia also leveraged Marketo’s Professional Services team to help them build a lead nurturing framework. “This process has been incredibly fast and agile. Marketo Professional Services took the time to really understand our business. We’ve put together a comprehensive lead nurturing plan very quickly,” Sloan said.

Benefits

With Marketo at the hub of the sales and marketing processes, Acquia drove 129% increased growth year-over-year. By implementing Marketo and lead scoring, marketing is passing over only 32% of leads to sales versus 80%. By cutting down on the volume of leads and improving the quality, Acquia empowers the sales group to follow up on the right leads at right time. The result is a 200% increase in conversion rate.

Tom Wentworth, CMO at Acquia, says he has taken guidance in his own career from the lessons he’s gained from Marketo. “Marketo has taught marketers and CMO's how to be better marketers,” he said. “Marketo provides the data to prove the impact that marketing has on Acquia’s growth. These days, it's really important to make data-driven decisions, and Marketo gives me all the data that I need to be an effective chief marketing officer and to have a seat at the revenue table.”